Sunday, September 30, 2007

Climate Change At: Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem Party Conferences

There has been quite a bit of noise in the runup to the various party conferences in the UK. The information of this topic is dispersed all over the web. This is my attempt at bringingtogether the relavent publications, websites, audio&vidoe etc...

Climate Clinic: A Chance for a broad coallition of NGO's to educate and lobby MP's.

Comment/Blogs:

Plane Stupid where represented at the climate clinic by Joss Garman, Dr Parr of Greenpeacewas also there making it quite clear that there is no accomidation to be found between rampantairport growth and serious climate policy.

Dr Parr accused the aviation industry of not engaging with the challenges posed by climate change, asserting that it was 'rhetorically accepting it, but actually not dealing with it'.

Gordon Brown told me the UK has set an example in the past with debt cancellation and that his government was aware of the Christian Aid and I Count campaign but he didn’t commit himself beyond that.

Then we had a panel with MPs and activists, chaired by the director of WDM, Benedict Southworth and the chairman of the IPPC, Dr Rajendra Pauchavri.

We shared the experiences of how the poor in Kenya and El Salvador are affected by climate change.

We showed them that climate change is real, it’s really happening; it is the poor of the world, who are the smallest emitters of greenhouse gases, who are the most affected by the carbon pollution of the developed industrialised countries like the UK.

In political parlance it was a "full and frank exchange of views!" But don't let me tell you about it, read the write up in the Guardian. They called it: "one of the most fractious fringe event so far." I think I am happy with that. Greenpeace has a reputation for confronting issues head on, and there is no better way to do this than a real political event where temperatures run high and passionate arguments are made.

Audio:

The institute of public policy research has quite a bit of audio, some on climate change, transport etc., from both the Lib Dem and Labour Party conferences.

Video

The Lib Dems are the only ones who have taken climate change on as a central party theme for there conference. For this reason, there is a fair amount of video available with the party leader and other party members discussing the issue as a central part of the conference proceedings.

The main documents to be published prior to the party conferences where the Zerocarbon Britain report by the Lib Dems and the Qaulity of Life Comissions outcomes by the tories. Unless it's passed me by there hasnt been anything significant by Labour.